50 companies own over a million acres of England and Wales, according to Land Registry figures seen by Who Owns England.

The figures, disclosed under freedom of information law, show that a few dozen firms – from water utilities and mining corporations to aristocratic estates and offshore companies – own vast swathes of the English and Welsh countryside. The top fifty own 1.3 million acres, or over 3% of the entire land area of England & Wales.

Full details of the 50 firms are in this Google spreadsheet; a summary table is below.

Rank	Company name	Acreage	Company’s activities
1	United Utilities Water Limited	140,124	Water utility
2	Dwr Cymru Cyfyngedig (Welsh Water)	77,975	Water utility
3	Yorkshire Water Services Limited	68,927	Water utility
4	MRH Minerals Limited	67,935	Mining
5	Harworth Estates	67,159	(formerly) Coal mining
6	Severn Trent Water Limited	51,668	Water utility
7	Lafarge	48,557	Mining, cement, aggregates
8	UK Power Networks Services (Contracting) Limited	48,262	Grid
9	L.E.T. Nominees 1 Limited	30,269	Aristocratic estate
10	Gunnerside Estates Limited	27,258	Grouse moor, offshore
11	The Boughton Estates Limited	25,516	Aristocratic estate
12	Cemex UK Operations Limited	25,340	Cement
13	UK Coal Kellingley Limited	25,247	Coal mining
14	Albanwise Limited	22,361	Real estate company
15	Beeswax Farming (Rainbow) Limited	21,891	Farm business
16	Woburn Estate Company Limited	21,474	Aristocratic estate
17	Ramsbury S.a.R.L.	21,373	Offshore estate
18	Northumbrian Water Limited	21,032	Water utility
19	Elveden Estates Limited	20,664	Aristocratic estate
20	Hanson Quarry Products Europe Limited	20,534	Mining
21	Swangrove Estates Limited	20,502	Aristocratic estate
22	Corlands Minerals Limited	20,371	Mining
23	Featherstone Estate Limited	18,119	Grouse moor
24	Ham Nominees Limited	17,908	Aristocratic estate
25	Rathbone Trust Company Limited	17,854	Rathbones act a trustee for families, on whose behalf they hold the legal title to land.
26	Anglian Water Services Limited	17,607	Water utility
27	Mainline Pipelines Limited	17,216	Multi-fuel pipeline company
28	Tata Steel UK Limited	16,692	Steel
29	Wemmergill Estates LLP	16,001	Grouse moor
30	Thames Water Utilities Limited	15,987	Water utility
31	South West Water Limited	15,816	Water utility
32	Weardale Estates Limited	15,523	Grouse moor
33	Peel Estates	15,041	Property, energy, shipping, retail
34	Taylor Wimpey UK Limited	14,684	Housebuilding
35	Knarsdale Estate Limited	14,538	Grouse moor, offshore
36	Arago Limited	14,533	Grouse moor
37	Methley Trustees Limited	14,397	Grouse moor/ aristocratic estate
38	Pencelli Limited	14,209	Military training ground
39	British Gypsum Limited	13,661	Mining
40	Ford & Etal (Trustees) Limited	13,622	Aristocratic estate
41	Strutt & Parker (Farms) Limited	13,463	Farm business
42	Percy Northern Estates Limited	13,193	Aristocratic estate
43	Grimsthorpe & Drummond Castle Trust Limited	12,870	Aristocratic estate
44	Farmcare Trading Limited	12,615	Farm business
45	Badgworthy Land Company Limited	12,526	Hunting society
46	College Valley Estates Limited	12,395	Farm business
47	Rose Chaplet Nominees Limited	12,129	Aristocratic estate?
48	Blankney Estates Limited	11,909	Farm business
49	Tesco Stores Limited	11,743	Supermarket
50	Insite Development Limited	11,411	Real estate company?

Topping the list are three water utilities (a sector explored previously on this blog) – United Utilities, Welsh Water and Yorkshire Water. The two English water firms have previously refused to disclose maps of whey own land. This latest data confirms that they are likely the biggest corporate landowners in England and Wales. In total, eight water companies make it into the top 50 corporate landowners list.

Mining and quarrying firms also feature prominently. MRH Minerals Ltd, fourth in the list, own 67,935 acres in Cumbria, although what quarrying rights it has in a county dominated by the Lake District National Park is unclear. The fifth largest land-owning company is actually an ex-mining firm – Harworth Estates, the property wing of what used to be UK Coal. Its various subsidiaries now own some 67,159 acres of land – much of it presumably still coal-bearing, but, with UK Coal now liquidated and the last deep coal mine closed, the business focuses on real estate development. The French industrial products company Lafarge, seventh in the list, owns over 48,000 acres when its cement, tarmac and aggregates divisions are combined.

One of the UK’s largest grid companies – the distribution network operator UK Power Networks – comes in at number eight, though its substantial landholdings are likely to be made up of many small sites like substations.

Whilst privatised utilities, mining and grid firms dominate the very top of the rankings, the rest of the list is peppered with the private playgrounds of the rich. Tenth spot goes to Gunnerside Estates Ltd, a huge grouse moor estate in the North Pennines owned by an offshore firm registered in the British Virgin Islands that ultimately belongs to billionaire businessman Robert Warren Miller. Indeed, grouse moor estates – also explored before on Who Owns England – make up a large proportion of the list. Others include the Wemmergill Estate (29^th in the list) owned by a multi-millionaire former poultry farmer; and the Bollihope Estate, owned by Arago Limited (36^th in the list), whose ultimate owner is the Dubai royal family.

They sit alongside other aristocratic land empires like the Lowther & Lonsdale Estate (‘L.E.T. Nominees 1 Limited’) in Cumbria, the Boughton Estates (owned by the Duke of Buccleuch), and the Woburn Estate (the inheritance of the Duke of Bedford). It’s important to note that this list excludes the landholdings of private individuals, as the Land Registry refuses to disclose such information en masse, so many aristocratic estates are not listed. Notable by their absence, for example, are the Duke of Westminster’s huge Grosvenor Estate, and the Duchy of Cornwall, which appears to be registered in the private name of Prince Charles.

Old money also jostles for prominence with the nouveau riche. ‘Beeswax Farming (Rainbow) Ltd’, whilst sounding like a hippie commune, is in fact a huge farm business believed to be owned by billionaire James Dyson, inventor of the Dyson hoover. (In 2015, his estate received £1.5 million in farm subsidies).

Other notable farm businesses on the list include Farmcare Trading Limited, run by the Wellcome Trust, which in 2014 acquired the Cooperative Group’s farms; Strutt & Parker Farms in East Anglia; and the Blankney Estates in Lincolnshire.

The grouse moor estate owners aren’t the only ones using offshore firms to run their landholdings. The Ramsbury Estates, covering some 21,000 acres of Wiltshire surrounding the Savernake Forest, is run by Ramsbury S.a.R.L, registered in Luxembourg. Its ultimate owner is Stefan Persson, the chairman of retail chain H&M.

Peel Estates are an unsurprising appearance in the top 50 – being a huge property empire in the north west, whose secretive owner, John Whittaker, lives away from the public eye on the Isle of Man. Amongst his many property interests are the Manchester Ship Canal and the MediaCityUK complex at Salford. Indeed, though the Land Registry data lists Peel’s many subsidiaries as together owning 15,000 acres, the conglomerate’s own website claims they own some 37,000 acres (15,000 hectares) – so much of this must be registered under different company names.

There are some bizarre surprises in the top fifty, too. The 14,000-acre Pencelli Estate, near the Brecon Beacons, is owned by the Honourable Artillery Company – one of the ‘oldest military organisations in the world’, set up by King Henry VIII, whose charitable purpose remains the “better defence of the realm”. And the obscurely-named Badgworthy Land Company Limited is a hunting society founded in 1926 that has acquired large tracts of Exmoor (something it’s done in competition with the League for Cruel Sports, who have tried to outbid them).

A handful of other notable names complete the list. Taylor Wimpey, one of the largest UK housebuilding firms, own 14,684 acres – a startlingly large area, which raises questions about landbanking by developers, a practice that has drawn much criticism from politicians in recent years. And controversial for different reasons are the landholdings of Tesco, whose vast out-of-town superstore developments are attested to by these numbers, showing they own some 11,743 acres.

The data was disclosed by Land Registry in June 2015 in response to a freedom of information request, so the figures should be accurate to that date.* Subsequent requests for information on “area owned” – Land Registry lingo for its data on acreage – have been refused on the grounds that it is “not held” – despite, of course, having released it previously. They claim that due to effect of “General Boundaries”, exact area owned information is not held.

Sounds like yet another reason to open up the Land Registry to see what info is really kept, and what isn’t.

*If any of the landowners mentioned here wish to contact me to update or correct information on the scale of their landholdings, I will gladly oblige.